According to the author's bug report, it's just an API change that he will need to update the extension to use. I don't see anything about the facility to turn off javascript being removed.

Your trust is very commendable, but you should think of licences as being about making permissions clear, rather than enforcement. You say that you trust people to do the right thing, but the fact of the matter is that you are giving them permission not to! (Although I acknowledge I'm making assumptions about what you think "the right thing" is here!)

On a slight side note, I always get a chuckle when I see people getting upset about some-company-or-other not acting "in the spirit of open source" when, in fact, the company's doing exactly what they have been permitted to do. It's like saying, "here, take this with no obligations whatsoever!" and then getting upset when someone doesn't do what you want with it.

The same is true for licences. If you want recipients of your code to contribute their changes back to the community, then the GPL expresses that those are your desires. Whether you (as the copyright holder) choose to enforce that or not is really a separate issue.

You're being too black and white about it. The GPL *is* about freedom: *user's* freedom. And it preserves this by *restricting* developers. It's just a matter of perspective.

The apparent contradiction of applying restrictions on developers in order to preserve user's freedom might seem confusing. I liken it to a "free society" that is achieved by putting restrictions on its members (e.g., they can't kill each other).

Have you?

By restricting an individual from denying everyone else's freedoms, *overall* there is more freedom in society. It works the same way as a free society in which you are not free to go round killing people.

I have no idea which specific circumstances you are referring to, if any, but it sounds like a simple licensing error to me. Why would a person who produces software and who wants to retain the kind of control that you talk about over it and its source code choose the GPL? They want to write proprietary software, by the sounds of it. The GPL is there for people who don't want to retain that kind of control and want to give the software to the world.

While it may be convenient for you to discount any difference between free and open-source software, it is not a premise that I, the FSF, other free software developers and most open-source developers (for that matter) are likely to accept. If you want to talk about what the FSF has and has not achieved, you need to be prepared to talk about their specific goals over those of open-source. Otherwise what you are saying is meaningless.

This is not something specific to the GNU GPL, but to all free and open-source software licences. Releasing your source code under one of these licences is akin to giving it away to the community, for free, in perpetuity. And this is usually the reason for choosing the licence.

OK, yes. I was trying to point out that there there is doubt as to whether it would be possible to relicense the kernel. But you are correct: my point is moot if Torvalds doesn't want to.

As I said in relation to RMS: just because the FSF do not endorse any companies, it doesn't follow that they are *hostile* to corporate interests.

I'd wager you are correct! But they should still be enormously proud of their community -- they've achieved a great deal, and in the face of some stiff opposition from the larger corporate world. I see no merit whatsoever in insinuating that the community doesn't exist. On the contrary, I think they deserve a lot of credit.

But that doesn't make it "hostile to business". It just means that licensing your code under a free (or open-source) licence is likely to significantly hamper your ability to sell the software its self. That said, many companies still do sell FOSS directly. These companies also usually accept donations towards their efforts. And it is not uncommon to see them selling services around the software, such as support, management (of the software, not people), publishing and merchandise.

The point here is that free and open-source software is at odds with proprietary software. But it's not at odds with business in general.

I'm afraid profiting certainly is "less than altruistic". It's entirely the *opposite* of altruism, in fact.

Many people who write FOSS are volunteers, but even where they are businesses, these are simply not concerns that the FSF *should* have. The FSF are concerned with furthering software and user freedom, not with how businesses make their money. Expecting them to take a less absolute stance is unrealistic - it's not that they are against business, it is simply that it's outside of the remit of the organisation. It would be like asking a human rights organisation to turn a blind eye to human rights violations because it would be more costly, or convenient for businesses not to have to bother with worker safety, or pollution regulations (for example). As with those organisations, the FSF's position is always going to be that software and user freedom should come first and that businesses should make money in such a way as not to violate those principles.

Another thing to consider is that you only seem to be evaluating FOSS from the position of a business. Many other perspectives exist that are valid and important: For education, free and open-source software is extremely useful, both practically and as an educational tool. For scientific purposes, or high-load server systems, it can often be essential to be able to get at, understand and modify the workings of software. In any scenario where security is important, such as in countries with oppressive (or failed democratic) governments, or high-profile organisations, running software where you are able to confirm that it does what it is supposed to, rather than having to implicitly trust a software vendor, is a sensible policy. And for every single home user (which, let's face it, includes all of us, our children, parents, grandparents, family and friends), having software that we know works for our benefit only is good and proper; more than just an "ideal". So this is about much more than just giving a small minority of people access to source code.

On this point, we agree completely -- It's very confusing indeed. I tend to use the terms FOSS or "software freedom". On the bright side, I have noticed RMS use the term "libre software" a few times recently, so perhaps a gradual shift towards that has already begun.

This is a matter of perspective, though. Those extra restrictions in the GPL are there to prevent you from restricting others; you don't have the freedom to deny other people's freedoms. In the same way as in a free society you are not free to go around killing people. So, from that perspective, you could argue that, while more restrictive to the individual in receipt of the licensed material, the GPL has more freedom in it from the point of view of society.

I agree, but with two exceptions. Firstly, it's not always "either or". For example, if you were to choose a screwdriver and had the choice between one that was made from Chinese child-labour, or one that was made locally, ethics can play a part in the decision. Secondly, you should not confuse valuing user freedom with religion. However fanatically, the former is an ethical consideration whereas the latter is superstition.

I would like to add that if you are "inventing a new protocol that you want everyone, everywhere, to integrate and ship with their software, be it open or proprietary", then the LGPL is quite suitable for libraries as well.

And also, that the GPL is not primarily about having "control over the commercial uses of your work", although it is used that way. The GPL is intended to be about enforcing freedom for all users.

This whole paragraph is a bit confused. For a start you are clearly talking about a developer, and not a user. Secondly, I would like to see examples of the incompatibility issues you claim are the case (I am not aware of any problems distributing a GPL program that uses a ASF licensed library, for example). Thirdly, you are citing license incompatibilities as a reason that the GPL is not about user freedom, which makes no sense (unless you are suggesting they were deliberate?).

That's because this is not possible! The thing that the GPL prevents, which the MIT (et al) do not, is someone releasing a proprietary, closed-source version of the software. It's quite simple. You are muddying the situation by saying that the copyright holder can still make a closed-source version of the software, because this will *always* be the case - they are the copyright holder! And I disagree with you when you say that this doesn't matter because some prior version was open-source -- it will matter a lot to some people.

These restrictions are not "onerous" if you are concerned software/user freedom, which they are there to protect.

This goes without saying. I'm sure the free software movement, rather than the OSI, is the reason we have such major *free* software.

That is because they are probably not as concerned with software and user freedom as they are being able to make money from their software. Unless you believe these projects were ill-informed when making a choice about licensing, it follows that their license choice reflects their goals, which are not as aligned with those of the free software movement as they are the open-source movement. That's all.

This has more to do with not being able to obtain permission from the many, many contributors.

Parts of Android, like the Linux kernel, *are* released under the GPL.

The FSF is not hostile to corporate interests.

Just because people "typically" aren't involved in the free software community doesn't mean that it doesn't exist!

Why should he? And why would not doing so make free software hostile to business? It doesn't follow.

It is often the case that motives surrounding software freedom clash with those of profit. That is to say, all too often companies make profit by preventing access and limiting rights to software which they have written. I'm not saying this it wrong, but only that it is often at odds with free software. But do not confuse this situation for one in which those who are interested in free software are hostile to business. That is simply untrue.

The answer here is obvious: the company values the financial value of its work above software and user freedom. So the GPL is unsuitable for its purposes.

Conclusion

You seem to be rather against the free software movement, for reasons that I can not fathom. Sure, I could understand you not caring about the issues the free software folks do. Or I could understand you caring about those issues, but feeling that the free software folks are going about solving them in the wrong way. I could understand you not wanting to be part of it. But why so hostile? Before people start to assume that you are a paid astroturfer or -- worse still -- that you are ignorant, perhaps you would like to explain your hostility, rather than apathy, towards something that is largely accepted to be working for the benefit of software and user freedom?

...so does an anarchistic (rather than a lawful) society. But that doesn't mean its the better option. For example, would you expect a "free society" to allow you to murder people?

In the same way, copyleft licences balance your freedoms with those of others. What you are are *not* free to do under the GPL is curtail the freedoms of others to view, modify and redistribute source code. Creating an individual limitation so as to protect the freedoms of the rest of the world doesn't make the GPL "less free" any more than having laws in a free society does.

I want all your money. Do you also find this idea to be "old-fashioned" and "a barrier to progress"?

Ubuntu is still *mostly* Debian packages, IIUC. In other news... Debian is approx. 18 years old.

After writing new pages for a site, I still to this day have to spend extra time getting it to work on IE7/8. All the other browsers (pretty much) work the same. But I regularly have to do things slightly differently so that IE renders pages the same as the other browsers. So, not so nostalgic for me!

I think a requirement (unstated, but implied) would be that you can run the server yourself. So I would guess that Ubuntu One is probably not what the OP was looking for.

I think by "paper", they probably meant newspaper. Unless they were just referring to a sheet of British A4 they found somewhere.